The deal for Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) to allow Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to sell text ads on the portal's search pages may happen more quickly than most analysts believed. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Yahoo Inc. moved closer to outsourcing its search advertising to Google Inc. after an initial test of the system yielded what the two firms deemed positive results."

The partnership could add several hundred million dollars of revenue to Yahoo!'s annual numbers. Most observers believe that regulators would be troubled by the two largest search companies joining forces.

The news still begs that question of whether any deal can be better than Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) offer to buy Yahoo! for over $29 a share. The first offer was at $31, but Microsoft's shares, part of the payment, have declined since then.

Yahoo!'s actions to run away from Microsoft seem to go along the lines of trying to stay independent for the sake of being independent. In other words, the company has no answer to the question of why investors are better off if Yahoo! stands alone.

Since no one other than Microsoft wants to buy the portal, the answer is that Yahoo! has lost all options to defend its present strategy. A deal with Google does not, in any way Yahoo! can explain, make the company worth $30 a share.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Google's (GOOG) shares continue to be stuck below $500 where they have been since late February. Part of the reason for the fall is that comScore data showed that the number of people who clicked on ads at the big search engine was weak in January.

It looks like the stock will drop again as "click rates" for Google ads rose only 3% in February when compared with the figures for the same month last year. According to MarketWatch: "Google reported 25% growth in paid clicks in its fiscal fourth quarter ended in December. But comScore data released last month showed flat growth in Google's paid clicks in January." Now, investors can ponder another piece of bad news.

The easy answer to the Google data is that a recession is slowing down advertising activity everywhere. Google carries millions of ads in its AdSense program, so it would make sense that it should suffer some fallout.

But, the answer may be more troubling than that. Readers of Google's search pages may be discovering that the text ads next to the listings are from marketers trying to take advantage of people looking for information by clogging pages with related messages. As more people understand the system of targeting based on search results, fewer are willing to be sucked in by companies trying to reach them due to their behavior.

If the Google system of matching ads to search results is putting its customers off, that would be worse news than the effects of a recession.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.